03/10/2015

Hillary Clinton's emails are becoming public as are emails about other personal accounts potentially used for official State Department business. In a series of emails, we see Clinton's aide, Philippe Reines, show his anger, including this "Note" at the end of a message to Gawker:

"(NOTE: How about you, me and lying liar source take a trip to the polygraph store. The three of us strap in and we let the needle decide. Loser pays and issues a public apology. I don't need to know their identity until they lose.)"

This is CJ Ciaramella, a reporter for the Washington Free Beacon and Vice. Wondering if you have any response to this Gawker article alleging that you and Huma Abedin used private email addresses to conduct official government business while at the State Dept:

As I’m sure you well know, not archiving official business conducted on a private email address is a violation of the Federal Records Act. A FOIA request for your State Dept. emails is also currently being appealed. Please email or call: [redacted]

Best, CJ Ciaramella

Here are more quotations from Reines' emails:

Did you attempt to verify your source's assertion of my use of such an email using the same creepy methods you did with my close friend and colleague Huma Abedin? Assuming you did, why doesn’t your piece note the results of your creepy methods?

If your lying liar pants on fire source worked with me at a federal agency as you and they contend, did you ask them to provide even a single email exchange with my using that account?

Cockamamie Theory: Is it your belief that I orchestrated this from private life months after leaving my job at State? If yes, is it your belief that my long reach would rig something as implausibly stupid as the reply you got? That's just insulting. I mean, it put me in a worse light than if they had just ignored you.

02/28/2015

A New York Times article discusses the interpretations and misinterpretations of punctuation marks. Of course, texting has raised new issues, and this isn't the first time the topic is of interest.

Mashable published an article more than a year ago about the perplexities of marks in messages, particularly periods as aggression. Turns out, only 39% of college students use punctuation at the ends of texts (45% at the ends of instant messages).

The NY Times writer reminds us of the history of punctuation:

"The origins of punctuation lie in ancient oration, when marks were used in handwritten speeches to advise when and for how long a speaker should pause. A period was a part of speech that had a beginning and end, a comma indicated the shortest pause, while the colon was somewhere between the two.

"But there are no pauses or inflections in digital communication; we aren’t speaking the words out loud. Which means that even within the tiniest spaces, punctuation fills in the tonal holes."

She adds spaces before some marks, for example, "Can't wait !!" She believes this can "soften the marks themselves."

One editor says it well: "You could drive yourself insane trying to decode the hidden messages in other people’s punctuation." I'm sure many people do.

01/24/2015

TurboTax changed its software and didn't communicate the decision as well as it could have. People rely on the program to do their own taxes rather than hiring an accountant. But the company omitted some forms, and users didn't realize until they starting working in the system.

General Manager Sasan Goodarzi is front and center—including this photo— in the apology that was distributed by email to TurboTax registered users.

01/06/2015

A new study from the University of British Columbia's psychology department tells us to stop checking email so frequently. The study asked one group of subjects to turn off their email alerts and check email only three times a day for a week. Another group was told to check email as many times as they would like. Then, the groups switched for a second week.

Published in Computers in Human Behaviour, the study showed that checking email leads to feelings of stress and tension. Subjects answered the following questions:

How often have you felt that you were unable to control the important things in your life?

How often have you felt nervous and stressed?

How often have you found that you could not cope with all the things that you had to do?

How often have you been angered because of things that were outside of your control?